Order & Chaos Discussion Question

[Mens Rea]

Discussion Question

"Were players who were in the same Order/Chaos faction as you highlighted as green, freely attackable and freely lootable?"

My recollection is that if you were Chaos then all people who were Order would be orange to you, but members of other Chaos guilds would remain blue - unless your Chaos guild was warred to their Chaos guild, in which case they would be orange as well.

Any thoughts?

[Fwerp]

Both systems existed.

I believe I found patch notes for the current system -- the system you recollect was in place here until somewhat recently.

[Mens Rea]

Well there is:

4/13/98 http://wiki.uosecondage.com/?title=1998_Patch_Notes

Guild warfare is in place.

* Guildmasters can now declare war against other guilds. When the war is mutually declared, a state of war exists. Note that the Declare War window only shows 150 guilds at a time. To get a different set of 150, simply cancel the window and reopen it.
* Members of guilds you are at war with will appear orange.
* Fellow guildmembers will appear green.
* A new free-for-all warfare method exists: order and chaos guilds.
o Order and Virtue guards as they currently exist go away.
o Guildmasters can now declare their guild to be either order or chaos, if they meet the requirements.
o You must be at the third tier of Fame (the level just below Lord) and not be a murderer, in order to join an order or chaos guild.
o Any members who do not meet the requirements when a guild becomes an order or chaos guild will be kicked out of the guild automatically.
o If you are a member of an order or chaos guild, and become a murderer, or lose enough fame to fall below the requirements (by dying or by atrophy), you'll be removed from the guild.
o All members of order and chaos guilds will be forced to display their guild abbreviation at all times. In addition, their abbreviation will automatically be followed by "(Order)" or "(Chaos)".
o If you are a member of an order or chaos guild, and do not have the special shield, you can simply say "order shield" or "chaos shield" to one of the guards of Lord British or Lord Blackthorn (you must ask the appropriate guard for the appropriate shield, of course).
o The shields will no longr disappear immediately. They are also no longer required to be worn.
o For highlighting purposes, all members of guilds of the opposing alignment will appear orange, and can be freely attacked. All members of guilds of the same alignment will appear green, and can also be freely attacked.

Then the fame requirement was removed...

10/1/98 http://wiki.uosecondage.com/?title=1998_Patch_Notes

# Guilds and player vs player combat:
* The Fame requirement or joining and staying in order/chaos guilds will be removed.
* All the glitches in fealty calculation in guildstones are believed to be ironed out. Incorrect GMs will be automatically deposed when fealty challenges occur.
* You are no longer criminal flagged for looting the corpses of opponents in guild warfare.

So as far as the patch notes go, the system is seemingly accurate.

Thing is, I just wonder if there is a secret patch note somewhere which changed the highlighting rules for Order guild/Order guild.

Hence the discussion point to see if anyone has any information on it...

[MatronDeWinter]

I dont have info, but they changed it so other like-oriented guilds were no longer attackable sometime around UO:R because it defeated the purpose of the 2 faction system. Obviously people just went around noto-killing anyone they could, rather than the other team.

[nightshark]

I was only temporarily in O/C during T2A, but don't remember the allied faction appearing green. They certainly didn't appear green after UO:R release.

[yaadood]

I also was in order chaos during t2a on baja and specifically remember members of the same faction being blue...and having to war specific ones if we wanted to fight.

[Arkon]

I remember both. I'm about 99% sure it was both ways during T2A, during our time frame. When I first got into O/C other like-oriented guilds would appear green but this was changed so that they appeared blue. I was HEAVY into O/C during the latter time frame and specifically remember "grouping up" with other like-oriented guilds to fight huge wars and they were definitely blue.

[Kaivan]

This is a discussion that has been back and fourth for quite some time, and I must admit that I too recall that O/C appeared blue to each other (I never recalled it any other way). So, on that notion, I've spent some time looking up some information and I've found this information from newsgroup postings.

The first, a newsgroup posting that suggests that a change to O/C flagging is in the works:

I'm glad that UO is going to make fellow chaos members blue to each other
(if in other guilds). I'm sick and tired of chaos members preying on each
other. Doesn't this take the virtue out of the guild?

Chaos members who kill other chaos members are anti-social serial killers.
They have no honor and they should be banned from the game.

This second quote implies that the changes did make it to the servers.

Your depiction of Order/Chaos warfare is
hopelessly out of date. The Order/Chaos
system was revised several months ago so
that Order folk are now blue to other Order
folk and Chaos folk are now blue to other
Chaos folk. The only folks who are green are
the ones in your own guild, and if they're
gangbanging you then I suspect this is
indicative of an internal guild problem
rather than a flaw in the O/C system itself.

And, this final quote gives detailed information from DD on the subject, and where the information came from.

Pulled this off of Stratics today:

[begin quote]

The Future of PvP: Comments from the Dev Team

The following was recently posted on the Comments from the Dev Team
section of the Update Center. I know many of you who have taken
special interest in not only the proposed changes to the "blue PK"
problem, but also the latest comments from Designer Dragon concerning
in-town fighting will find the essay, which was written by the Dev
Team, not only interesting but informative.

Of Blue PKs, Townfighting, and You

Quite a furor started up on the various discussion boards today when
measures were discussed that we are taking to make towns a safer
haven. In addition, there's a lot of discussion going on around the
measures we're going to take to reduce antisocial behavior in
Britannia.

We want to make clear that we regard player-vs-player combat as an
important part of the Ultima Online experience. We feel that it can be
a fun pastime, that it can provide great challenge, and that it also
allows the online society to develop in interesting ways, allowing
greater scope for roleplay.

That said, we are working towards reducing the amount of playerkilling
in UO. In particular, we are targeting the so-called "blue PKs"--those
who kill whilst flagged as a blue innocent, thus surprising their
victims, and then macro away time online in order to keep their murder
counts low enough to remain blue. We feel that this conscious
circumventing of the reputation system cannot continue.

To that end, we are instituting a new tracking layer on the reputation
system. In addition to tracking reports on an 8 hour timer, we will
track them on a 40 hour timer as well. We will base stat loss on the 8
hour timer, but we will base going red on the 40 hour timer. This
means that when a player receives his fifth murder report, he will
remain red for 40 hours of play time, instead of 8. We have been
passively tracking these figures on the public shards for some time
now, and have enough data to be able to tell that a large number of
the blue PKs will be caught by this additional tracking layer, and
made red. If these measures are not sufficient, we intend to keep
tightening up. The next obvious step would be to make the stat loss
count decay at 40 hours as well. In addition, we will be tracking the
number of times a player goes from red to blue, and players who
exhibit a pattern of doing this will be made permanently red. This
will take effect next update.

A few other minor things will go in next update to better channel PvP
activity. Order members will now highlight blue to other Order
members, and Chaos members will appear blue to other Chaos members.
Shoving past someone while stealthy will make you visible. Lastly,
partly in preparation for someday making towns safe, but also simply
because of crowding and performance issues in towns, we will be
disallowing summoning of creatures in towns.

In the future (but not in the next update) we intend to add a far more
robust system for consensual player-vs-player combat. Players should
expect scoring systems akin to those that we have been testing on the
Abyss, the ability to capture cities, and large-scale warfare between
factions that are major players in UO's ongoing plot. Guild warfare
will receive an update as well, making it easier to declare war and
also to determine guild standings. Once these changes go in, we will
also make towns a safe haven for all players.

In addition, of course, as we've previously mentioned, the Abyss will
be returning permanently, with new features.

We hope that these changes will make UO a more enjoyable experience
for everyone: the devotees of playerkilling and the pacifists alike.

-The UO Dev Team

[end quote]

The last quote proves to be particularly interesting because it not only talks about the change to O/C, but it dates the changes to be part of the March 17, 1999 patch (we don't have that patch on our patch notes because the March 28 patch notes are nearly identical and have a couple of extra lines of information and the mengaxe.com listing missed it, but an archive exists that has the information so it will be added). Not only that, the quote specifies where the information was posted. So, by going to an archive of the Comments from the Team section of the old owo website, I was able to find the identical quote straight off the OSI website.

So, in short, this is one of those patches that didn't make it into the patch notes, but was seen on live servers (similarly to the parry change with archery) meaning that O/C members who are not in the same guild should flag blue to each other.

[nightshark]

To that end, we are instituting a new tracking layer on the reputation
system. In addition to tracking reports on an 8 hour timer, we will
track them on a 40 hour timer as well. We will base stat loss on the 8
hour timer, but we will base going red on the 40 hour timer. This
means that when a player receives his fifth murder report, he will
remain red for 40 hours of play time, instead of 8. We have been
passively tracking these figures on the public shards for some time
now, and have enough data to be able to tell that a large number of
the blue PKs will be caught by this additional tracking layer, and
made red. If these measures are not sufficient, we intend to keep
tightening up. The next obvious step would be to make the stat loss
count decay at 40 hours as well. In addition, we will be tracking the
number of times a player goes from red to blue, and players who
exhibit a pattern of doing this will be made permanently red. This
will take effect next update.

Sorry to deviate from the main topic. I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, especially since when I asked Derrick about this, he gave me the incorrect answer. I asked Derrick long ago if a new murder count will "refresh" the long term murder count timer (same for short terms). He told me the answer is yes. This article also suggests that this should be the case.

Currently, it doesn't work like that on UOSA. It is possible to go red, and then blue 10 minutes later, if it has been 39 hours and 50 minutes since your last murder count. More bizarre - it is possible to go from 0-1, and back to 0 murder counts in this fashion (as in there is a timer ticking even when you don't have any counts).

In response to the article, I kinda wish they'd implemented 40 hour short term counts.

[Mens Rea]

That's some good research there Kaivan - well done.

It's good to see my legacy of perfectly accurate recollection continues.

Good to see you're still going strong too, Assshark!!

[Kaivan]

To that end, we are instituting a new tracking layer on the reputation
system. In addition to tracking reports on an 8 hour timer, we will
track them on a 40 hour timer as well. We will base stat loss on the 8
hour timer, but we will base going red on the 40 hour timer. This
means that when a player receives his fifth murder report, he will
remain red for 40 hours of play time, instead of 8. We have been
passively tracking these figures on the public shards for some time
now, and have enough data to be able to tell that a large number of
the blue PKs will be caught by this additional tracking layer, and
made red. If these measures are not sufficient, we intend to keep
tightening up. The next obvious step would be to make the stat loss
count decay at 40 hours as well. In addition, we will be tracking the
number of times a player goes from red to blue, and players who
exhibit a pattern of doing this will be made permanently red. This
will take effect next update.

Sorry to deviate from the main topic. I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, especially since when I asked Derrick about this, he gave me the incorrect answer. I asked Derrick long ago if a new murder count will "refresh" the long term murder count timer (same for short terms). He told me the answer is yes. This article also suggests that this should be the case.

Currently, it doesn't work like that on UOSA. It is possible to go red, and then blue 10 minutes later, if it has been 39 hours and 50 minutes since your last murder count. More bizarre - it is possible to go from 0-1, and back to 0 murder counts in this fashion (as in there is a timer ticking even when you don't have any counts).

In response to the article, I kinda wish they'd implemented 40 hour short term counts.

According to the code, and a single reasonable assumption, it looks as if the duration of the murder count should be reset upon each new murder count. The relevant code block is as follows:

Code: Select all

#on message<"murderReport">(object sender, list args)
{
  integer Q67H = args[0x00];
  integer murderCount = 0x01 + getMurderCount(this);
  if(murderCount >= 0x05)
  {
    if(murderCount == 0x05)
    {
      systemMessage(this, "You are now known as a murderer!");
    }
    integer Q4UR = 0x00;
    integer Q4UT = 0x00;
    object Q4UP = getItemAtSlot(this, 0x0B);
    if(Q4UP != NULL())
    {
      Q4UR = getHue(Q4UP);
      Q4UT = getObjType(Q4UP);
    }
    args = this, murderCount, getSex(this), Q4UT, Q4UR, getHue(this);
    multiMessageToLoc(getRelayLoc(this), "updateBountyDesc", args);
  }
  changeKarma(this, 0x00 - Q67H);
  setMurderCount(this, murderCount);
  callbackAdvanced(this, 0x0001C200, 0x11, 0x03);
  return(0x00);
}

The relevant line of code here is the callbackAdvanced line. The arguments for the callback are the object that the callback is for ("this" being the person who is being reported against), the duration of the callback in 0.25 second ticks (115,200 ticks or 8 hours in this case), the callback ID for the code to callback to (17 in this case), and an unknown variable (3 in this case).

What the above code tells us is that when a player is reported for a murder, if the player has more than 4 murder counts, they have a bounty description update which describes their hair color and type on the nearest bounty board. Additionally, for anyone receiving a murder count, their Karma is reduced by some amount based on the fame of the player killed, their murder counts are set to the new amount, and a callback is set to occur in 8 hours for callback 17. Unfortunately, based on what code is available at this time, this is where the direct paper trail ends because we don't know how the demo actually processes callbacks. Mainly we don't know the answer to the question: Can a player have multiple callbacks to the same ID ticking at the same time? Despite this, we can make a reasonable guess as to what happened.

Based on the above question, we really only have two possibilities, either multiple callbacks could run at the same time, or they couldn't. If they could, the murder count system would work like this:

Player A receives 5 murder counts 1 hour apart. 13 hours later, player A has no murder counts.

This is an obvious assessment of the system under the assumption that murder counts could wear off simultaneously and is one that is drastically different from the system as it was understood at the time of the demo. If, however, they could not, the system would look like this:

Player A receives 5 murder counts 1 hour apart. 45 hours later, player A has no murder counts.

With these results, the system is much more similar to that of the system as it was understood during that time.

Ultimately, when comparing the two possible ways of handling murder counts, the second method far more closely reflects the system for the era, which means that strictly by the demo code and the assumption of a single callback being processed (with the obvious updates for short/long term counts), each time a murder count was received, a player would have their wait time reset.

Note: It's actually quite easy to modify the code so that each new count wouldn't reset the wait time. By changing the last lines of code from

Code: Select all

  setMurderCount(this, murderCount);
  callbackAdvanced(this, 0x0001C200, 0x11, 0x03);

to

Code: Select all

  setMurderCount(this, murderCount);
  if(murderCount == 0x01)
  {
    callbackAdvanced(this, 0x0001C200, 0x11, 0x03);
  }

which would make the only time that the callback timer is set at the point when the player receives their first count. With such an easy change, it seems as if a reset on wait time is intentional whenever a new murder count is received.

[Batlin]

Mainly we don't know the answer to the question: Can a player have multiple callbacks to the same ID ticking at the same time?

Let me fill in the blank here. No, he can't have. When the callbacks functions are called to start a callback, the code will first check for an existing callback (with that ID) and remove it if found.

[Zelek Uther]

Patch 140b:
Virtue guilds are no longer allied
Patch 140 - Jan 19-26: RunUO 2.1 + misc item mechanics.

[Panthor the Hated]

Patch 140b:
Virtue guilds are no longer allied
Patch 140 - Jan 19-26: RunUO 2.1 + misc item mechanics.

So.. not to be rude or anything.. But why are you going through bumping old posts for this?


srs.

[Zelek Uther]

Sorry, I didn't mean to bump old posts.

I am including the patch reference so if anyone reads the thread, they can see the patch that addresses the issue.

It's something that I hope new people will find helpful. (I'm newish myself)